Monty Python, 02, London, review

Monty Python flying as the famous five prove more golden than olden

“A bunch of wrinkly old men trying to relive their youth and make a load of money.” That was the irony-laden joke Mick Jagger cracked at the Pythons’ expense earlier this week to mark – and mock – the start of their eagerly awaited reunion gigs at the most daunting venue in town, 45 years after they first hit our TV screens and 40 years after they last performed in the capital in Drury Lane.

Given that Jagger’s jibes came with the blessing of Mssrs Cleese, Idle, Gilliam, Jones and Palin, it’s obvious they’ve been readying for flak. Sure enough the first night afforded some ammunition for anyone wishing to pronounce them past it. Age hasn’t withered Terry Gilliam’s sinister animations but with cameras relaying the famous five’s every move on screens either side of a lavish music-hall stage, there was no disguising the poignant truth that sic transit gloria Monty: John Cleese was hoarse, Terry Jones relied on cue-cards and at times they looked lost amid the spectacular.

Yet you don’t need to be a die-hard fan to take the view that none of that really mattered. The Pythons came, they doddered, but they conquered. What they lack in sprightliness is compensated for by the choreographed frolics of a troupe of 20 performers young enough to be their grandchildren. Although there’s an over-reliance on TV clips between-scenes, the live material looks far more golden than olden, reminding us at every turn of the debt we owe them – as a surprise cameo from Stephen Fry and starry video contributions from Stephen Hawking and Prof Brian Cox further confirmed.

They arrived to a prolonged roar of grateful applause – emerging from a police-box (the “retardis”) and they departed on the heels of a standing ovation, after a mass singalong of that national anthem, Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.

The two and a half hours in between suffered its moments of anti-climax, the Lumberjack Song felt strained, and the Ministry of Silly Walks hasn’t survived transplanting into a dance-routine with its funny-bones intact. But the joyous reprise of skits like Four Yorkshiremen, Nudge Nudge and Spanish Inquisition made you grasp what all the fuss was about and there's plenty more where that came from; the mash-up finale of Dead Parrot Sketch and Cheese Shop is worth the price of admission alone.

They've still got it (just): this is an end-of-the-pier show fit for the funny, peculiar end of a comedy era, and at times, great wonder, this circus really flies.